+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 3, Issue 26, December 9, 2004.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development.

++ISSUE 26 CONTENTS.

SECTION ONE: New references.
What's new at the Web Design Reference site?
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
03: DREAMWEAVER.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: FLASH.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: PHP.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
12: TOOLS.
13: TYPOGRAPHY.
14: USABILITY.
15: XML.

SECTION TWO:
16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Getting Started with Accessibility Assessments
By Andrew Arch, Sofia Celic, Steve Faulkner, and Brian Hardy.
"In this poster paper we will highlight the basic techniques that people can apply to identify many of the accessibility issues commonly observed. Applying a range of simple techniques means that web site owners and developers can identify many accessibility issues during the site's development phase and as part of an ongoing quality assurance strategy without having to understand all the technical aspects of how the web site works and is coded."
http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw03/papers/arch2/paper.html

Accessibility: Panning for Gold
By Andy (Malarkey) Clarke
"We have many conversations with potential clients about accessibility and many requests for proposals where Bobby compliance is required. While I am genuinely happy that accessibility is being raised, I often find myself correcting the misconception that Bobby and similar tools are standards. Like Photoshop, Dreamweaver or Visual Studio, these tools are simply developed to be part of a web design tool-kit, they are not standards."
http://tinyurl.com/3kz85

Accessibility: On a Shoe-String
By Andy (Malarkey) Clarke
"There are now many tools available to assist designers in creating sites which are more accessible. Here are a few which form part of the base-level testing routine which we implemented at Stuff and Nonsense and some of the reasons why we do what we do."
http://tinyurl.com/6snc9


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Do You Want To Do That With CSS? - Multiple Column Lists
By John Gallant, Holly Bergevin
"It is generally well known that list items in an <ol> or <ul> will display vertically in their default presentation. For short lists, or navigation menus, this generally isn't considered a problem. But in other cases, having an extensive list display vertically isn't quite as desirable. It might be a better use of screen space to have that list appear as a series of columns, side by side. In the past, this was done by placing separate lists in individual table cells, or by floating the lists. Semantically it is more desirable not to break up a list this way, but is there another choice? Yes, there is! Join us as we explain a new CSS method that uses a single list while displaying that list as multiple columns. Let's go!..."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=27F87

Remote Control CSS
By Russ Weakley
"Russ Weakley, author of the impressive Listamatic CSS demonstration, recently was challenged to create a TV remote control navigation bar using CSS. The anonymous challenger argued that this exampled disproved Russ's assertion that using a list for navigation doesn't limit the page designer. Never one to shirk a challenge, Russ provided a detailed response, including a mock-up of a remote control constructed from an unordered list..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/remote/

Remote Control CSS Revisited - Caving in to peer pressure
By Russ Weakley
"It seems my quick and dirty remote control example was not well received. In fact, the best comment I have seen so far was 'a sad fruit list control panel with four buttons'. So, how about a remote control device with multiple rows of buttons?"
http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001466.php
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/remote/remote-new.htm


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

6,225 Font Tags
By Kim Cavanaugh
"And the moral of the story is: (One more time) Friends don't let friends use font tags. Ever. Even better, keep them away from controlling alignment with spurious divs inserted into your document for the simple purpose of putting content in the center of a table cell. And for God's sake, pay attention to what you're doing and have a peek at the code every once in awhile. You'll save everyone many hours of frustration somewhere down the road when they try to help dig you out of the hole you've created."
http://www.communitymx.com/blog/index.cfm?newsid=315


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Heisenberg Usability Principle
By Tom Chi
"I don't know of studies that have been run to quantify this effect, but from testing experience I know that user behavior can shift quite radically. What's worse is that it doesn't shift in a predictable direction -- some users become anxious and fail where they normally wouldn't, while others stay calm longer to secure their 'usability gift pack'".
http://tinyurl.com/5qfo8


+05: EVENTS.

XTech 2005 Conference
May 24-27, 2005
Amsterdam, Netherlands
http://www.xtech-conference.org/

EISTA '05
The 3rd international conference on Education and Information Systems: Technologies and Applications.
July 14-17,2005
Orlando, Florida U.S.A.
http://www.confinf.org/eista05/website/


+06: FLASH.

An Internet Divided
By Cameron Adams
"On the one side, you have Flash. On the other, you have HTML. And in the middle is the Internet, slowly being carved up. It's been the title fight on the Web now for about five years. Which technology shall reign supreme? Previously, I'd always thought it was a battle over the same territory -- for the domination of the entire Web. But I feel they've become increasingly specialized, each growing (or shrinking, depending on how you look at it) to occupy their mutually exclusive part of the Internet..."
http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2004/12/02/


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Taming the Select
By Chris Heilmann
"Of all the form elements in HTML, SELECT is the enfant terrible. It behaves nicely when kept as is, but as soon as we try to teach it some style manners, it'll go ballistic on us. Some browsers allow for border, others allow for a different font, some just don't allow any styling at all. Partly this is our own fault; we shouldn't try to redesign form elements to blend into the page design. Users know their form elements and know what to do with them, if we change the look of the elements, they will have to adapt. Form elements cannot be recognized subconsciously any longer - the user has to find them. It is up to us to decide if we can afford that. That being true, we will still have to redesign form elements, as the design or the client dictates it, and we want them to pay us. It doesn't hurt mentioning the drawbacks, though."
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/Taming-the-Select/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Project Management Checklists
By Alan Green
"These checklists are a tool for helping you focus attention on the critical aspects of your project at the different stages of its lifecycle. Since they are your tools, feel free to use them in any way that you find helpful."
http://cardboard.nu/docs/pm_checklists.html

 Finding The Sweet Spot
By D. Keith Robinson
"The sweet spot is designing in a space and having a process in place that supports as many goals as possible. It's bridging that (mostly artificial) gap between user and business goals. Finding the sweet spot can be a challenge, but if you're like me, and you've got a passion for your work, you'll do whatever it takes to find it."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/finding_the_sweet_spot/

W3C Celebrates Ten Years Leading the Web
By W3C
"This year, the World Wide Web Consortium celebrates its tenth anniversary - ten years of its mission to lead the Web to its full potential. On 1 December, W3C Members, Team, invited speakers, and international media will gather in Boston, USA to reflect on the progress of the Web, W3C's central role in its growth, and the risks and opportunities facing the Web during W3C's second decade. 'This special anniversary brings the opportunity to acknowledge the impact of the Web and the W3C's stewardship role,' said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. 'I hope it will also inspire ever more collaboration, creativity, and understanding across the globe.'"
http://www.w3.org/2004/09/W3C10.html


+09: NAVIGATION.

The Right Trigger Words
By Jared M. Spool
"The purpose of every link is to move users forward. Each link needs to give off enough 'scent' to clue the user into the content to follow. That scent comes from the trigger words. When creating new content, the designers' most important task is to ensure that the links to that content contains the right trigger words."
http://www.uie.com/articles/trigger_words/


+10: PHP.

Recursion In PHP: Tapping Unharnessed Power
By Robert Peake
"I liken PHP to the Punk Rock movement of the late 1970s. The raw power of the movement has attracted tremendous participation. And just as anyone who could strum power chords and scream along to a melody could start their own punk band, likewise anyone who can search php.net and download sample code can learn to program PHP. The lack of barriers present in other languages - like licensing fees, proprietary approaches, and privately guarded examples - makes PHP all the more attractive and available to the programmer on the street. Frankly, this thrills me, because it is this conscious commitment to openness that has made PHP one of the most popular programming languages of our time. The accessibility of PHP also means that the PHP community is composed of programmers from a very diverse blend of backgrounds, many of them self taught. Such programmers sometimes miss out on some of the finer points of programming that can be learned through academic training. Next to object oriented programming, normalization of relational data structures and refactoring, recursion is one of the topics in computer science most often overlooked by the self-taught PHP programmer. This article is an attempt to help redress this situation."
http://www.zend.com/zend/art/recursion.php

PHP On-The-Fly!
By Dennis Pallett
"PHP can be used for a lot of different things, and is one of the most powerful scripting languages available on the web. Not to mention it's extremely cheap and widely used. However, one thing that PHP is lacking, and in fact most scripting languages are, is a way to update pages in real-time, without having to reload a page or submit a form.
http://tinyurl.com/6dbe2


+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

How Microsoft can support CSS2 without breaking the Web
By Tristan Nitot
"In its short, 2 1/2 year life, the Netscape Evangelism team helped literally thousands of authors and administrators of web sites around the world to improve their support for the W3C DOM and CSS Standards. If such a small group with limited resources can help change the web, imagine what Microsoft could do with its resources if it only tried."
http://tinyurl.com/6uefl

Unbreaking the Web
By Eric A. Meyer
"...the 'more standards will break stuff' argument just doesn't fly any more. Microsoft can figure out what to do that won't break pages, and there's a ton of things that are new-to-IE, the implementation of which will no more break pages than did the image toolbar. In cases that might cause breakage, Microsoft can determine?with community help, if they were to ask for it?how to minimize breakage while maximizing benefit. To claim that possible Web page breakage prevents Microsoft from increasing standards support makes about as much sense as to claim that possible program breakage prevents them from ever changing or improving their operating system."
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/12/01/unbreaking-the-web/


+12: TOOLS.

Webucator
A CSS reference that allows you to test your CSS code.
http://www.webucator.com/resources/css/reference.html

Colour Matcher
By Jemima Pereira
"Scroll and match the boxes until you find a web site colour scheme you like. The Colour Matcher includes all 216 'web safe' colors. It was built with CSS - see the page source for the code."
http://www.sibagraphics.com/colour_matcher.php


+13: TYPOGRAPHY.

Thinking with Type
By Ellen Lupton
Here is the companion web site for the book "Thinking with Type for Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students".
http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/


+14: USABILITY.

10 Ways to Continuously Improve Your Intranet
By Donna Maurer and Tina Calabria 
"This article outlines 10 practical ways that an intranet can be improved incrementally without yet another redesign. Although some of the methods may require mini-projects to be set up within the intranet team, many of the methods can be applied alongside the team's usual maintenance activities."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_continuousimprovement/index.html

Is Perceived Usability/Aesthetics More Important Than Real?
By Don Norman
"..For truly one time uses...I suspect ease of getting the answer dominates all else. For repeated uses...aesthetics matters slightly, rapidity of scanning the information matters a lot, and my ability to tailor the selection and placement of just the information I care about dominates..."
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/is_perceived_usabili.html

The Sphere of Design
By Ben Hunt
"When you design a Web site should you design first for being functionally effective or you should design first for achieving aesthetic balance? Ben Hunt, the Web Doctor, has published an early excerpt from the introduction to his forthcoming book 'Web Design from Scratch' - the book. The argument that Ben elegantly brings forward is the secular one heating up around the issue of form versus function."
http://tinyurl.com/5zpk2


+15: XML.

Strictly Speaking
By Patrick Griffiths
"XHTML Transitional is a form of HTML commonly used by developers. But I'm not quite sure why. As John Oxton recently mentioned, doesn't it kind of miss the point? XHTML Transitional is just that - a transition. It is designed to help developers make the move from one technical standard - HTML 4 - to another technical standard - XHTML 1 (Strict). This is a great learning step if you're stuck in your HTML 4 ways, but it shouldn't be seen as an ultimate goal..."
http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/archives/000078.php


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

Accessibility Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility

Association Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/associations

Book Listings.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books

Cascading Style Sheets Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/css

Color Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/color

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/dreamweaver

Evaluation & Testing Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/testing

Event Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/events

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/flash

Information Architecture Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/architecture

JavaScript Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/javascript

Miscellaneous Web Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/misc

Navigation Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/navigation

PHP Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/php

Sites & Blogs Listing.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/sites

Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/standards

Tool Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/tools

Typography Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/type

Usability Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability

XML Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/xml

[Section two ends.]


++END NOTES.


+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

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http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist
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+ SIGN OFF.

Until next time,

Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009
mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu


[Issue ends.]